The situation
A Naperville family moved into a home with smart-home infrastructure that felt less like a smart home and more like a technology museum. The systems were over two decades old. None of them talked to each other. Most of them no longer worked. And the family was stuck owning a collection of disconnected devices that had become more trouble than they were worth.
They tried the obvious consumer fixes first. Smart bulbs from the usual brands. Alexa for voice control. Google Home for the kitchen. HomeKit as a backup. But layering Alexa, Google, and Apple on top of each other creates its own chaos. One app for the lights, another for the speakers, another for the doors. Three different voice assistants in three different rooms, none of which actually knew what the others were doing. The family had spent money trying to solve the problem and ended up with more complexity.
So they called us. What they needed wasn’t another band-aid. They needed a complete overhaul designed around how a family actually lives.
Our approach
We started by identifying what the home actually needed: reliable climate control, easy lighting throughout, controllable shading, multi-room audio that doesn’t require three different apps, and security integration that doesn’t demand constant management. Then we asked the right question: what system can deliver all of that through a single interface, from a single vendor, with one point of support?
The answer is Nice. We specified their whole-home automation platform — the same foundation we use across our most ambitious projects. Nice brings lighting, climate, security, shades, and entertainment together under one control interface. One app. One touchscreen panel in the kitchen. Voice control that actually understands what you’re asking because it isn’t split across competing platforms.
What we installed
The Nice platform sits at the core, with a kitchen touchscreen as the primary in-home interface and the Nice app for everything else. We added a property surveillance system designed for peace of mind, not paranoia. Multi-room Sonos audio so music flows through the home without anyone fighting with patchwork speaker selection. And we built in flexibility to add or modify control zones and automation scenes as the family’s life changes.
How it lives
The family walks in and checks the security status on the keypad near the front door. Sunset comes and the shades lower on a timer. Movie night means one button on a Pico remote for “theater mode” — lights fade, shades close, audio routes to the living room. Morning means another scene: soft lighting, the kitchen comes alive, news on the kitchen display.
They inherited broken technology and decades of deferred decisions. We gutted it and rebuilt it thoughtfully.
This is the pattern we see again and again: the DIY route creates complexity. Multiple ecosystems fight each other. Devices that work with Alexa but not HomeKit, or vice versa. One app per brand. A family ends up texting each other “did you turn off the speakers, or is Alexa doing that?” — and nobody knows. When you step back and design a whole-home system as a system, the answer is a single, unified platform with one touchscreen, one app, and one vendor relationship. It’s more elegant, more reliable, and more future-proof than bolting together fragments.
The family is no longer fighting their home. Their home works for them.